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11/18/2006

Benefits from Smoking

Fox News has a funny discussion here: Smoking increases testosterone and makes men more virile. Generally it is useful in preventing the onslaught of "Man'opause." The number one reason that men have less testosterone then their fathers is because of a decrease in smoking. Smoking thus helps increase memory, muscle mass, and a whole string of other things.

It is hard to think about what this world would be like with out Friedman. Everything from vouchers to the negative income tax to ending the military draft to properly evaluating the impact of the FDA to even the withholding on income taxes is due to Friedman. Even more important is how Friedman taught people that economic freedom improves the quality of life.

CBS2 still fighting to find out about Chicago's mysterious missing murder count

Crimefilenews keeps us up to date Chicago's attempt to hide murders. CBS2 has more on the story: here. CBS's reporter Pam Zekman is one gutsy reporter. It is still amazing that the other reporters at this press conference have still not written anything on the story. The video at the CBS website is worth watching. The Police Supt. response to her questions are pretty entertaining, if sad.

There are a couple of issues here. Does the implant itself affect people's health? No. Surgery that requires putting people to sleep has some minimal risks, but so do lots of things in life. The question is whether people can make these decisions for themselves. Finally, let me note, I am not advocating that anyone has these implants, but I think that people should be able to make these decisions from themselves. Similarly, if people want to convince women not to do this surgery, more power to them. But convincing people not to do this and banning the surgery because of false claims of danger are two different things.

Here is a question. Why is it that some people think that women should be able to have an abortion without any restrictions, but those same people do not think that women should be able to make the decision over whether they can put something like a breast implant in their body? It would seem that they should feel even more strongly about letting women have breast implants than abortion. It is a cleaner question in terms of letting women do what they want with their own body since a fetus or baby or whatever one calls it, at least complicates the question to some degree.

Well that was then. Now that the election is an entire week behind us, Rendell's opposition seems to have disappeared. The Philadelphia Inquirer ran this under the headline that "A taxing ride may be ahead for Pa.":

Where is the news coverage on Chicago's missing murder count?

WBBM had two amazing stories on the Chicago police department reclassifying murders so that its murder rate would look lower. I can't find other news coverage on these amazing charges. Where is the news coverage in Chicago on this?

11/14/2006

Is Chicago hiding murders to keep down official murder rate?

Why is it only WBBM-TV that is covering this case? The anchor correctly described this as "shocking." Whether it is incompetence or something intentional, it would appear to be newsworthy. I guess that we will see if the Tribune and Sun-Times cover this tomorrow.

The cycle continues: Outside UN member countries supply arms to warlords, civil unrest with some civilians managing to hold their own, confiscate the guns from the civilians, civilians slaughtered, blame the guns, blame not enough UN power. Sad. Pray for those on the ground in Chad.

NY Times just doesn't get it on Drug Price Controls

The problem isn't that the government can force down drug prices, the problem is that they will. Why even bother giving the drug companies a patten on the drug if the government can then force down the price?

A real scandal in Chicago's crime statistics

Crimefilenews has some amazing details on the city of Chicago apparently hiding the number of murders. The WBBM-TV story is entitled "Are Police Hiding Homicides to Make the CIty Seem Safer?" and is pretty hard hitting. WIth all the other corruption problems in Chicago have been bad, these corruption claims really hit home. Using a conservative approach and really just taking the most obvious cases, WBBM found 80 murders that the police reclassified as not being murders. The Medical Examiner said that the police claims reclassifying these murders as not being murders are simply involving: "The police are out of their area of expertise." The Anchors on the news show were right to say "this is just stunning." If this doesn't cause a national sensation, the press will really be in the tank for Daily.

11/13/2006

"Mich. Supreme Court Weighs Requiring ID To Vote'

I hope that the logic of the claims over photo ID disenfranchising voters will be really questioned. There is no attempt to link up the people without ID to see if they would get IDs or whether they wouldn't vote even if they did have an ID. Those who don't have a driver license or other photo ID might not feel that they need one. Look at Mexico. You had a huge percentage of the population taking the time under very trying conditions to get a photo ID to vote when they had to do so.

There is thunder Down Under in the wake of a study published in the British Journal of Criminology that asserts thenearly $500 million spent on Australia’s gun “buy-up” precipitated by the 1996 Port Arthur massacre has had no measurable effect on that nation’s homicide rate.

At least part of the controversy swirls around the fact that the study’s authors, Dr. Jeannine Baker and SamaraMcPhedran are members of gun organizations, a fact they reportedly disclosed up front to render moot any allegations that they were merely pawns of the gun lobby.

However, The Sydney Morning Herald noted, “The significance of the article was not who had written it but the fact ithad been published in a respected journal after the regular rigorous process of being peer reviewed.”

According to The Sydney Morning Herald, more than 600,000 firearms were taken in by the government, which at leastpartly reimbursed their value to the unfortunate gunowners who had to surrender their firearms—primarilysemi-automatic rifles and pump shotguns—under gun laws passed after Martin Bryant went on a rampage, killing 35 people and wounding 18 others.

But Baker and McPhedran turned out what Don Weatherburn, director of the New South Wales Bureau of Crime Statistics and Research, called a study that was “well conducted and published in an internationally respected, peer-reviewed journal.”

“It would be unfair to accuse the authors of ‘cooking the books’ to achieve a certain result,” Weatherburn wrote in a Morning Herald Op-Ed article.

But Simon Chapman, a professor of Public Health at the University of Sydney, said in a recent radio interview that the Baker-McPhedran research should not be taken seriously. Speaking to Daniel Hoare with Australia’s National Radio, Chapman insisted tougher gun laws are needed on the island continent.

“We need to look at tightening up gun laws on hand guns,” Chapman argued. “There has been a proliferation of handguns in recent years, but I think generally speaking, one can say that the gun law situation in Australia remains one of the toughest in the world. And that’s to the great disappointment of the gun lobby in Australia and internationally.”

But Baker, in the same report, fired back: “In 1996 we were told that taking the ... buying back those civilian firearms, off those licensed firearms owners would make society safer and it would reduce firearm deaths. The evidence isn’t there to support that.

“The whole point was we were looking at the National Firearms Agreement,” she said, “which was the turning point or the sort of pivot point that we were examining. In terms of mass murder, there have been mass murders since Port Arthur. They haven’t been with a firearm.”

Baker further observed, “If the money spent on gun control in 1996 had been spent on suicide prevention programs or mental health programs, we would have saved a lot more lives.” . . .

With Dems in control, "high hopes" that Federal Assault Weapons ban will be renewed

Unfortunately, I think that this is correct. It was only through heroic efforts by Tom Delay in the House of Representatives that the Assault Weapons Ban was not renewed and allowed to sunset in 2004. Bush would have signed it. The Senate would have passed it. Now there is nothing in the way of passing this. Nothing that is except logic and the fact that there is not a single academic study showing that these laws at either the federal or state level have reduced violent crime rates.